


The Dragon Strain

by Goldmonger



Category: Power Rangers
Genre: Crack, Gen, Headcanon, Recreational Drug Use, headcanon!tommy, rita's going to have a hard time recruiting this one, someone preserve me from my own imagination, temporary plot-hole filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Tommy Oliver missed the detention roll-call because he was smoking weed in the bathroom. They don’t call him the Green Ranger for nothing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for this, sorry
> 
> This easy-bake oven version of Tommy is 5% original Mighty Morphin Tommy, 5% Keanu Reeves and 90% my own blasphemous creation. Your move, Power Rangers sequel…
> 
>  
> 
> *

Honestly, there was no precedent set for a seventeen-year-old black belt in karate and pothead ending up in detention, besides the obvious constrictions of Tommy’s hobbies. He was an anachronism, a paradox, a got-damn-mother-fucking-headache, at least according to his stepdad. He didn’t belong with the jocks and he didn’t jive with the stoners either, which left him avoiding them and everyone else. That was why he was in the bathroom. That and the dodgy vindaloo he’d had for lunch, but mainly the social outcast thing.

Tommy took a puff of the joint that had previously been stuffed in his sock (a real Sophie’s Choice, that one, since he liked to take a hit during school and especially detention, but Joanna the security guard was way too thorough) and exhaled, a cloud enveloping his head. He sneezed, smacking his lips at the strange taste. He was just going to roll the damn things in the school from now on, screw Feig and his eagle eye; nothing was worth breathing in his gym socks. He chuckled to himself, beginning to feel pleasantly muggy again. Maybe _some_ things were worth it.

He blew streams of smoke toward the open window, trying for the translucent rings and little tornados he’d seen people conjure in videos online. He failed miserably over and over, the minutes slipping by, and soon the joint was burnt out. The idea of returning to Detmer’s little detention of horrors was putting him on edge again, so he patted his sock for his emergency blunt.

He felt nothing but skinny ankle, and wondered vaguely if he’d moved them to his jacket pocket while he was waiting for an opening to escape the classroom. When he searched for _that_ , he found he was wearing his ratty band shirt but not his varsity jacket, a.k.a the newest thing he owned and the one aspect of his scruffy appearance that connected him to the school’s karate team. Well shit.

He was mentally psyching himself up to leave the cubicle he’d been hiding in for the past – half an hour? Three hours? - When there was the unmistakeable creak of the bathroom door opening and the clamour of male voices. Tommy ducked, even though the cubicle was almost twice as tall as him. He started blowing air upwards frantically but silently, waving his hands to physically usher out any remaining smoke and praying the smell of marijuana hadn’t replaced the more acceptable - and more ungodly - scent of a men’s bathroom.

“- farther than last time,” one of the people who had entered the room was saying. There were the sounds of zippers and faucets being turned on and off.

“What like, you found a bigger ravine to fall down?” The sound of a urinal flushing. Tommy tried not to move or make any noise, but the toilet seat had turned into an onion ring and he could hear colours. At least the munchies hadn’t set in yet.

“No, but I can clear the quarry in one leap now. Even Zack couldn’t do that the first time.”

“It seems dangerous, you know, like something that could end badly. Kimberly would kill you if she found out.” A pause. “Or try to beat your record.”

The first guy laughed. Tommy was squinting, trying to figure out where he knew that voice from. Had he heard it on the school’s crappy radio station or something?

“I’d like to see her try,” the guy said, and Tommy felt his stomach swoop unpleasantly. That was Jason Scott, one of three football players who hadn’t yet thrown his bag in a dumpster or shouted homophobic slurs at the state of his long hair. A few of his former teammates had tried several times to beat him up, which always ended awkwardly for everyone involved – Tommy defended himself expertly, letting whatever jock of the week that wanted to take a swing at him get tired of his ‘float like a butterfly’ shtick; when his opponent was red and furiously frustrated, he ended it with one sharp jab, sending the jock to the floor and stunning the crowd that usually gathered to watch. No-one ever seemed to know what to make of Tommy; his ghostlike presence, eccentric mannerisms or unnatural skill in the dojo. Add to that the ‘medicinal’ smoking and secret love of _The Golden Girls_ and you have what the poets call ‘an enigma’. Tommy smirked.

“We do seem to be getting stronger, overall,” the other guy was saying enthusiastically. What, were they doing their hair out there?

“Like, more than we were initially?”

“Yes! I have to kind of – rein in my punches when sparring with Alpha now. I actually dented him last week. I’ve been researching how to repair it but I’m not sure whatever he’s made of is on the periodic table, so it’s been a trial.”

Jason gave a low whistle. “That’s weird. But pretty cool, too. We should test it later, see our limits. I bet Zordon has a couple of opinions on it.”

Tommy’s mouth was open, his eyebrows trying their hardest to melt into his hairline. Did Jason Scott, legendary quarterback, revered pretty-boy, all-star hero of Angel Grove, just say ‘ _Zordon_ ’?

“Good idea! Don’t tell Zack about it though, please? He’s already tried to lift a garbage truck, I’m worried he might succeed if you tell him it’s a possibility.”

“Deal.”

Tommy Pink-Panthered over to the crack in the cubicle door, pressing his eye to it to see out into the bathroom. That was Jason Scott all right, leaning over the sink to – god damn it, actually fix his hair – while his friend, Billy Cranston of all people, waited by the hand dryer, holding some contraption up close to his eyes and fiddling with it. It looked like a trigger device for a bomb, which would explain all the code-words the pair of them seemed to be using, but Tommy digressed. He wasn’t touching that idea with a ten-foot pole, not while the paranoia was just settling in.

“Come on,” said Jason, straightening his collar and heading for the door. “I actually do have trig homework to finish today. Finals are going to kick my ass come June.” He sniffed. “And I might be going nuts, but I swear it smells like weed in here.”

Billy followed him out, imploring him to say ‘butt’, to which Jason then enquired, slightly befuddled, why he would say ‘butt’ at all. The confusion faded into background chatter as the door to the bathroom swung shut.

Tommy emerged from the cubicle, still a little iffy on the general concept of balance. The mirror was being a particularly unforgiving bastard to his now high-flying self, and he tried to at the very least flatten his hair or blink the redness from his eyes.

“Friggin’ jocks getting into Dungeons and Dragons now,” he mumbled. “Friggin RPGs in the year of our lord 2017.” He blacked out for approximately half a second and discovered he was now closer to the mirror over the sinks. He still didn’t have his emergency joint, and thoughts of Zordon and gaping ravines were vibrating inside his jellied brain. He might take a walk after school, figure out where the hell Jason Scott was doing his extreme role-playing or whatever.

Tommy took a whiff of his shirt and hair and figured it wouldn’t draw too much attention, especially if he got his jacket on to lock in the smell. He left the bathroom grudgingly, wondering if the Kimberly the guys had been talking about was goth Kimberly, who commissioned charcoal drawings of Cthulhu on Etsy and made a killing, or cheerleader Kimberly, who got chewed out for cyberbullying, and chopped off her hair in a much-discussed Mulan moment. Tommy didn’t know, but the idea of the quarterback _and_ a cheerleader taking up nerd culture apropos of their similar falls from grace was just too unlikely. Their mutual friendship with Billy Cranston even more so.

All he had to do was keep his head down and ride out the next few weeks of juvenile incarceration without getting into even more trouble, Tommy told himself, a little urgently. Whatever merry band Jason Scott had curated, it seemed it could be a by-product of the alien battle that had decimated Angel Grove a few weeks ago. A fan club, maybe. He didn’t watch the news lately, what with the government and the media floundering in the aftermath of what was a crisis-level event that shook the globe, but he knew people were idolising the aliens that saved the town, entire new religions popping up in the intervening days and weeks.

Creepy, he thought, as he slid behind his desk and eyed Jason and his motley crew: cheerleader Kimberly after all, Billy and – was that Trini Kwan from Biology? A tall, dark-haired guy ruffled Trini’s hair as he dragged his chair over between her and Jason, much to Mr Detmer’s chagrin. It was very suspicious, but then so was he, Tommy figured. He groped at his jacket for a while. His emergency blunt, he realised after a quarter of an hour, was in his other sock the whole time.


End file.
